IGN AU - The Week That Was: Vol. 3

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Musings on the week's biggest headlines... and more!

By Cam Shea, Patrick Kolan and Bennett Ring

Question: Why bother reading separate news pieces about the exciting world of videogames, when you could get all (okay, some) of the information in one handy at-a-glance weekly digest, complete with editorialising, random rants, probing analysis and a generous helping of ninjas?

Answer: Why indeed? Welcome to the (long awaited) third edition of IGN Australia's weekly (the clue is in the title) 'The Week That Was' feature. The basic idea is for the Aussie team to wax lyrical about the important stories of the week, the killer games we've been playing or reviewing, and, well, pretty much anything else of interest.

What are your big headlines for the week? What piece of news or game review has sent you into a whirling, red-faced tizzy? Comment below!

Cam's Take: Man, what a crazy couple of weeks it's been. We've been up to our necks in killer games to play (Super Mario Galaxy, Ratchet & Clank Future, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Mass Effect, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Unreal Tournament III, The Orange Box, COD4 and Crysis - not that it will actually run on my PC - to name a few), as well as not-so-killer games. We also just posted our updated Top Xbox Live Arcade games (love doing that feature - any excuse to sit down and play through all the new games), so check that out at this here hyperlink.

Notable by its absence here in the IGN AU office is Rock Band. Yes, we're still waiting for it just the same as you guys. Guess we'd better get the US guys to ship a copy or three over then&#Array; although I hate to think how much it'll cost postage-wise. Must. Unleash. My inner. Drummer. Soon!

What else has been happening (or, erm, not happening, as the case may be) in the world of videogames? Well, Nintendo just announced that the Wii has passed the 200,000 units sold mark here, which is pretty damn impressive, given that the system has done those numbers in just under a year. We'd love to see a breakdown of the users - how many gurning grannies are really playing this system? How many girls? How many guys? It will take an in-depth survey to find out, but we'll be addressing the 'grey gamer' phenomenon in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

Nintendo is stalking your grandparents. Run, old man! Run!

Also announced this week - Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will be hitting stores in March next year, "bringing more of what Rainbow Six fans love to the table," says the casino-pun-loving Yves Guillemot. As much as we liked the first one, we're not really sure why they're wringing another game out of this city and this concept. Why not go for Rainbow Six Macau? Or perhaps, Rainbow Six Atlantic City. How exciting would that be? Then again, maybe a new premise entirely might be good. Just a thought.

We should also mention that QANTM College, Australia's game-industry-focused learnatorium, now has a sister college - QANTM UK opened this week. Apparently "This new London-based college combines SAE's experience and Qantm Australia's expertise to provide the ultimate education in video games programming, web design and 3D animation."

One last thing before I turn the discussion over to Bennett and Patch. You might want to get on over to IGN's mega-feature-in-progress, the Top 100 Games of All Time. We all took part in the voting process, and we'll be very interested to see what you guys think of the results.